Whispering Smith published in the Littlehampton Gazette October 24th. 2013

I WAS getting a little bit fed up with the comments about my expanding waistline and my doctor telling me I was out of shape, shape wise. Having no willpower at all I joined Laura Goddard’s Littlehampton WeightWatchers for support in my efforts to lose a few pounds and in just 14 weeks I have lost two stone. I put this down, not only to WW encouragement, giving up junk food, sugar and losing my corkscrew but also to discovering, through WW a wealth of new and tasty food. Among these are courgettes, much like green sausages but with a completely different taste, possibly due to the fact there is no meat in them, and watercress, a rather doubtful item this as it grows in rivers and we know what fish do in rivers. By far the most curious of these ‘salad’ constituents is something called ‘lettuce’. Really weird stuff this, greenish mostly but can be frosty white, it comes in all colours, and degrees of crispness and you can eat as much as you like and not gain a single pound. I miss the sugar though but a parallel discovery is fruit, apparently fruit contains all the sugar you want which probably accounts for it being so sweet. Oddly enough, you can actually buy a container confusingly called ‘fruit salad’ which is a double bonus although I couldn’t find any ‘lettuce’ in the one I purchased. Biggest discovery of all is, if you eat less, and drink less, you too could lose weight and get a round of applause from your fellow slimmers.

ARUN council leader, Gill Brown’s recent assertion that voters have, in this area, always voted Tory and will continue to do so, may well come back to haunt her. The electorate in general do not appear overly enamoured with the current regime and its seemingly lack of interest in popular opinion and, in these days of social media and communication, they may well decide to march to a more independent drummer. As Bob Dylan so famously said, ‘the times they are a’changing.’

THE SOUND OF MUSIC? Well, maybe, but it isn’t a movie soundtrack that’s for sure as we have not heard such a thing since we were robbed of our cinema 268 days ago now.